WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Finance Committee on Wednesday began a review of a fiscal year 2026 budget that would result in a 5.03 percent increase in the property tax levy from the year that ends on June 30.

 

But even that jump could be optimistic.

 

Toward the end of an hourlong discussion of the spending plan that will go before the annual town meeting in May, Fin Comm member Melissa Cragg pointed out that the budget documents presented by the town manager assume a 4.3 percent increase in the town's assessment from the Mount Greylock Regional School District.

 

"It assumes the schools come in at a lower rate of increase than the town," Cragg said. "The School Committee had their first budget meeting last Thursday. The number they're coming up with is a lot more than 4 percent.

 

"And it's not what I would call an aspirational budget."

 

In fact, the draft budget discussed by the School Committee would hike the assessment to Williamstown by 7.96 percent from FY25 to FY26.

 

School officials are quick to point out that the number is not set in stone. The committee has at least two more meetings to consider revised numbers before voting a budget to send to member towns Williamstown and Lanesborough. And the district administration has promised to continue to look for savings on the expense side and work on adjusting revenue projections.

 

But no one could have come away with the Feb. 13 School Committee meeting expecting the kind of drastic changes that would bring the increase down to 4.3 percent.

 

And no one on the Fin Comm on Wednesday was arguing that those changes should be made.

 

As always, the regional assessment, which represents about half of the town's budget in any given year, will be the last piece of the budget puzzle for town hall to put in place. The School Committee is scheduled to finalize the region's budget at its public hearing on March 13.

 

In the meantime, Town Manager Robert Menicocci has figures for the town budget for the Finance Committee to review over the next several weeks.

 

On Wednesday, he gave the panel an overview, highlighting the drivers of increased expenses and giving some bad news about anticipated non-tax revenue.

 

He reminded the committee that the town tightened its belt during the COVID-19 pandemic and then benefited from better than expected local receipts (rooms and meals taxes and excise taxes) as well as an influx of cash from the federal American Rescue Plan Act.

 

"Over the past couple of years, our budgets were balanced and then some," Menicocci said. "We had healthy free cash available to us. And over the past couple of years, we've funded quite a number of different projects to kind of get caught up. We had some of our basic infrastructure — roads and bridges, culverts — that we have worked on or in the process of working on. We also got caught up on some of our equipment."

 

At the same time, Menicocci has followed the directive of the Finance Committee to reduce the town's "free cash" reserve, the money that accrues from higher than anticipated receipts and lower than anticipated expenses in any given year.

 

"But we're getting closer and closer to the point where there won't be much of that at all, and we have to think about how that change is going to come about," he said.

 

"This will be the first year we start to have that conversation, but setting the table for next year where that work will continue. We're going to have to make those decisions of things coming on budget. And it's going to be very transparent, very visible. But you're also going to see it because it will come into the tax rate and the levy."

 

Menicocci told the committee that of the main revenue streams outside of property taxes, only the motor vehicle excise tax is currently hitting its target for FY25. The others — rooms, meals and cannabis — are lagging.

 

"I think the conversation around, 'That number has got to go higher,' is probably over," Menicocci said, referencing past Fin Comm meetings where the panel has pushed him to raise projections for non-property tax revenue.

 

Of course, property tax will continue to be the main source of the town's revenue. Finance Director David Fiero told the Fin Comm on Wednesday. Local receipts account for 10 percent with state aid making up the other 6 percent. So when expenses rise, the overwhelming majority of that increase falls on the property tax levy.

 

Menicocci described the FY26 spending plan he submitted as "not too much to get too excited about" with little in the way of big new initiatives. And the biggest single driver is outside the town's control, a 16 percent increase in health insurance costs.

 

He indicated that the town is considering options other than the self-funded Berkshire Health Group.

 

"There are lots of thoughts about alternatives to all of this," Menicocci said. "I think all of health care is struggling. We've done research and haven't found any great alternatives, but we're looking at what other options there could be to try to flatten out this thing I think we experienced with our particular health plan because it's relatively small.

 

"We want to support local. It's important to support Berkshire Health Group if possible. But we also need to flatten this roller-coaster ride out."

 

And, for Williamstown at least, the increased employer share of health insurance premiums is not the only impact of the BHG hike.

 

"As part of landing the plane on our union negotiations, we put a one-time enticement in there to get our contracts signed," Menicocci said. "Basically, it's a signing bonus of sorts. But it's to recognize the fact that a 16 percent increase in health care premium in a given year is a huge step backward for anybody trying to make it and keep a family afloat. So we're making the commitment to a one-time health insurance stipend for staff, which will be: If you're a family on the health plan, it's a $600 stipend for the year, and if you're an individual, it will be a $300 stipend. What that represents is half of the value of what the increase will be."

 

Speaking of those collective bargaining agreements, they hit the FY26 budget in the form of negotiated cost-of-living adjustments over the next three years: 3 percent in years one  and two and 2.75 percent in year three, Menicocci reported.

 

He noted that all three of those increases are higher than the 2.5 percent increases that the town targets to reflect Proposition 2 1/2, which hangs over all municipal financing in the commonwealth. He said he thought that 2.5 percent might be attainable this year but inflation spiked just as he sat down to negotiate with the town's unions.

 

"Other communities around us were diving in at the 3 percent, and our staff deserves to be treated equally, at a minimum," Menicocci said.

 

He said union leadership had endorsed the three-year contracts that are scheduled to be ratified by the rank and file membership in the coming week.

 

There are two new positions included in the budget Menicocci presented on Wednesday night, but one is funded by reallocating money that was not being spent in the budget. The first is a part-time position at the Milne Public Library, and the second is $40,000 for a new job at town hall that Menicocci described as a "hybrid" position.

 

"It's a community engagement/communications/recreation-ish," he said. "Not recreation in a traditional sense, but someone who can help facilitate some attention to some programming around that - again, community engagement opportunity. It shows up as kind of an expansion, but what I would say is we had another line item we've been carrying for a few years. It's a mental health item related to the CARES Report that, in my mind, was related to, again, community needs and community engagement. That was underutilized. We kept it there in case something really caught on fire and we needed to address it. Thankfully, I think we were able to use that to address a few little things, but largely it went unspent.

 

"We're reallocating that to this position and honoring the recommendations of the CARES Report, the need for better communications, and having this position in place to make that happen. Keep the website meaningful and have a high level of engagement, versus what we have now, which is kind of the bare minimum of just getting critical information out there."

 

Another "reallocation" of sorts relates to the town's support of non-profits.

 

Traditionally, town meeting has voted overwhelmingly to give grants to several non-profits — most recently the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce, Williamstown Youth Center, Williamstown Community Preschool and Sand Springs Recreation Center.

 

Last year, three of those non-profits received a total of $155,000, which came from free cash (technically, the town's "unreserved fund balance"). 

 

Menicocci for FY26 moved the non-profit funding into the town's operating budget, which he described as more transparent and more in keeping with guidance from the commonwealth on the use of free cash. And in the draft budget he presented on Wednesday, he allocated $200,000 for non-profit support.

 

On Wednesday, the Fin Comm learned that the town has received applications from eight different non-profits — including some that never sought town support aside from the Community Preservation Act process — totaling $465,000 in requests.

 

That prompted a discussion among Fin Comm members about how to prioritize non-profits seeking funds, a dialogue that will continue over the next month and which echoes the conversation in the Community Preservation Committee this winter.